2. What’s a sentence?
• Here are three sentences:
– He smiles.
– Autumn leaves twirled gently to the ground.
– The park district will open an outdoor ice skating
rink in November.
3. Length does not determine what is and is not a
sentence. Regardless of how long or short a group of
words is, it needs two parts to be a sentence: a subject
and a predicate.
•The subject tells us who or what.
•The predicate tells us what about it.
4. Who or what? What about it?
He smiles.
Autumn leaves twirl gently to the ground.
The park district will open an outdoor ice
skating rink in November.
These two parts connect to form a basic
sentence, also known as an independent clause.
5. Another way to describe a sentence is to compare it
to a bike…
These two parts connect to form a stable structure.
The subject is one wheel;
the predicate is the other wheel.
6. We can have just one word in each wheel…
Students studied.
Children play.
7. But most of the time our ideas include more details.
We add extra words to the wheels.
Students in the biology lab studied cells under
an electron microscope.
The neighborhood children play basketball at the
community center.
8. Old magazines are stacked under the kitchen
table.
The weekend seminar explains how to start a
small business.
Meditation helps create a peaceful mind and
healthy body.
We can expand the wheels by adding
adjectives:
9. We can expand the wheels by adding
adverbs:
Airline employees worked diligently to reschedule
our flights.
We carefully loaded the van with furniture.
The driver realized immediately that he had
missed the exit.
10. We can also add prepositional phrases:
The windows rattled in the winter storm.
We loaded our hamburgers with ketchup, mustard,
and onion.
Some car dealers make most of their profit on
parts and services.
11. Regardless of how much detail we add, the wheels give
the same kind of information. The subject tells us who
or what. The predicate tells us what about it.
Who or what? What about it?
Randy loves pizza.
Companies benefit from customer loyalty.
Efficient train service will decrease traffic congestion.
12. Subjects and predicates connect directly. Do not
separate them with a comma.
Incorrect: Carlos and his family, showed me that
honor is more important than winning.
Correct: Carlos and his family showed me that
honor is more important than winning.
13. Dependent clauses
Dependent clauses cannot stand alone. They
are like baskets that need to be attached to a
basic sentence.
One kind of dependent clause begins with a
subordinating conjunction.
14. When the music began
Everyone started to dance.
When the music began,
everyone started to dance.
15. Here are some more dependent clauses:
As soon as it stopped raining
Because I registered early
When we need a quiet place to study
16. We can place these baskets on the front of a
bike.
As soon as it stopped raining, we saw a double rainbow.
When we need a quiet place to study, we go to the library.
Because I registered early, I got the classes I wanted.
17. We can also place them on the back of a bike.
We saw a double rainbow as soon as it stopped raining.
I got the classes I wanted because I registered early.
We go to the library when we need a quiet place to study.
18. Fragments
A fragment is just a part of a sentence. It may
lack a subject or a predicate. Often it’s a
disconnected basket.
19. As soon as I understood the problem. I thought of a
solution.
I was not responsible. When I was sixteen.
The village will enlarge the parking lot. Which
serves weekday commuters.
Let’s rent the same movie. That we saw last
weekend.
Disconnected dependent clauses
20. Disconnected description and detail
It was an easy task. Especially for someone so small.
The corporation provides employees with benefits.
Like medical insurance and a pension.
We have ordered everything on the menu. Except
fried buffalo wings.
We put an ad in the Lake Norman Times. Our local
newspaper.
21. I sprinted down the street. Trying to catch the train.
The scientists continued their research. Hoping to
find a cure.
To celebrate their anniversary. They are going to
Asheville for the weekend.
We walked up sixteen flights of stairs. To prove to
ourselves we could do it.
Disconnected -ing and –to fragments
22. As soon as I understood the problem,
I thought of a solution.
We can correct these fragments by attaching them to
the sentence.
I sprinted down the street, trying to
catch the train.
24. The bike is a concrete image of how sentences
work. This presentation, given at ATEG’s 2006
conference, shows you how to use the bike to
teach sentence structure. The slides are
examples of the kind of instruction found in
An Easy Guide to Writing
by Pamela Dykstra
Prentice Hall, 2006
ISBN: 0 -13 –184954 - 9
